The Art of Motivation: Harvard's 'powerful new model'
Harvard Business Review's 'summer reading' (their big summer edition) has a big piece on motivation. Timely, as motivation can dip drastically in a downturn, with employees worried about their finances, their job and the future.
The piece draws on the trendy 'neuroscience of leadership' - using MRI scanners to see which areas of the brain light up to show activity and engagement - and says that there are four key drivers of motivation:
1. The drive to acquire - rewards and experiences
2. The drive to bond - building a sense of belonging
3. The drive to comprehend - work must be meaningful
4. The drive to defend - fair play for all
Stefan Stern, in the FT today, points out that motivation remains a big headache for managers and leaders, regardless of the economic climate. A recent Hay Group survey of more than 3,100 organizations found that 41% of employees felt demotivated by their managers.
This reminds me of a true story my friend Henry Stewart, founder of Happy Computers, likes to begin his presentations with: a manufacturing company noted that its productivity figures went up on the weekend. It couldn't figure out why, till it dug a little deeper and realized the obvious: the managers didn't go in on the weekend.
Stern says that the 'powerful new model' trumpeted in the HBR doesn't actually add anything to what we know already which, he says, can be summed up in this paragraph from Frederick Herzberg, author, ironically, of one of the HBR's most widely-read articles, the 1968 piece "One more time: how do you motivate employees". Herzberg's seminal paragraph is this:
"If I kick my dog...he will move. And when I want him to move again what must I do? I must kick him again. Similarly, I can change a person's battery, and then recharge it, and then recharge it again. But it is only when one has a generator of one's own that we can talk about motivation. One then needs no outside stimulation. One wants to do it."
PS So what's your role in motivating? Providing inspiration and getting out of the way (apart from stepping in to support and ensure people have the resources they need). Inspired leadership is the piece that is missing in most organizations.
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Clarifications
The article seems to make sense, my question is:
1. Is there is particular order to attaining the motivation or is the motivation processed in tandem?
2. Do people pay heed to one drive more than the other?
3. Is there data that show the above?
As far as the dog example goes, SItuational leadership explains it well, if you expect low performance from a person, then you can be assured of low performance and if you have high expectations from a person, one can expect high results. - Pygmalion theory / effect.
I would certainly appreciate your thoughts on the above.
Rajesh Krishnan
Lead By Example
With the experiences I have had so far, I have noticed that nothing beats "Walking the Talk". If the Manager is motivated and truly believes in what he/she is working towards the motivation is contagious. However it need not be top-down all the time...
Any motivated individual can cause this in an organization.. and obviously the first person, has "being motivated" as an inherent quality.
You will still find a few people being unaffected by the "environment" thats ok.. but the overall productivity goes high if a majority are influenced.
Leaders, apart from being self-driven, have to focus on identifying these "sparks" and keeping them alive - taking forward Herzberg's example -ensure the generator is fuelled and maintained :)
I keep going back to my favorite philosophy - "What works when dealing with kids usually works everywhere else"!!! Bringing up 2 kids has reinforced this belief..